"THE EPICUREAN" Kate March

"THE EPICUREAN"

I LOVE to cook - anything - savoury or sweet, three course roast dinners or vegan brownies! I love both the art and science of cooking: I have taste and a nose for combining ingredients and spotting the missing component in just about any dish. For me VITAL AWARENESS is not only about exposing the horrors of factory farming and the unhealthy state of our current food industry but incorporates two other elements that are very important to me - community and quality ingredients.Community in sharing a table with friends and family and the community in bringing farmers and producers together - farm to table at its fundamental level. The other element is quality ingrediensts which can ony come from healty and fair methods in production, therefore what is of vital importance to me when purchasing animal protein is knowing that the meat, dairy and eggs I am eating have been ethically and humanely produced - that is why building relationships with sustainable livestock farmers is a key component of the work we do at VITAL AWARENESS

"THE ACTIVIST" Gillian March

"THE ACTIVIST"

Animal Welfare has always been a priority for me - going back to my early teens - from domestic animal cruelty to vivisection, and more recently the conditions in 'factory farms'.January 2011 found me reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Saffran Foer - it was staggering! The facts I knew about industrialized farming practices paled into fairy stories by comparison to the brutal facts that Foer shared in his book. It was then I knew I had to do something.In May 2011 seeing no alternative I stopped eating animal products completely, I was done with the meat dairy and egg industries.TOGETHERKate and I knew that we couldn't sit back and not speak out about conventional animal protein production, we couldn't be passive members in a food industry that we were becoming more and more upset about. We began educating consumers about the reality of industrialized farming systems aka 'factory farming, hence the birth of VITAL AWARENESS. SO here I am a vegan supporting ethical meat and dairy production. I don't believe that we are going to change a hard-core meat eating culture, and therefore promoting veganism isn't going to 'cut it', and besides it really isn't the answer to changing the way our meat, dairy and eggs are produced - SO we have to change the way we farm, and raise our animals; and it all begins with Awareness.